Everything about her was a mystery. Everything in it too.Because the Esmeralda was called Alfonso Gamero Cruces, as Sevillian as the Giralda or the Archivo de Indias or Blanco Cerrillo’s marinade. These times that seem new, with politicians in an uproar about identities (of sex, of country, of pets) become old in view of the irresistible rise, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, of this precursor of transvestism . He traveled a difficult path with the loneliness of misunderstanding but with the company of hard-won respect and affection. He became a character, something that is available to very few. You saw her walking down the street and left no one indifferent.
His booth at the Fair, on the edge that separated the Real from Calle del Infierno, on the corner of Pascual Marquez and Costillares, became an institution. He did not make distinctions or conjugate victimhoods. It became an NGO of lost souls, with a personality like Lili Marlen or Liza Minnelli from Bob Fosse’s Cabaret. It was a palimpsest of the multiple Seville in which you could see Nazario and Paco Gandia having hot drinks in La Centuria.
Unrepeatable artist, pure magical realism of a Macondo in a bata de cola,With Senator, he recorded an album of sevillanas full of humor and double meaning, with more soldiers than in Cerro Muriano. A couple of them were composed by Manuel Melado. I witnessed what he enjoyed with the Sevillian women of La Esmeralda, with his curse between Fassbinder and Rafael de Leon, the painter Manuel Salinas, who was lost in the abstract of his canvases with the roman paladino of the jokes of La Esmeralda.
Once I interviewed her in her booth for a television program presented by Alfonso Eduardo Perez Orozco. Julio Anguita’s Sumerian beard fascinated him and he didn’t marry anyone when it came to distributing tow. Once Isabel Pantoja, accompanied by Paquirri, attended the Lope de Vega theater for a gala for former students of Adelita Domingo’s academy. The Tardon singer was in an advanced state of pregnancy. La Esmeralda touched his belly and told him: “and that is Poquirri”.
Once again, the Duchess of Alba visited the same stage accompanied by Jesus Aguirre. “It looks like the mute of the Marx brothers,” he sentenced before the glamor of the tenant of the Duenas palace. Not malicious jokes of a character from the Ambiguous Testament who survived by a miracle in a world still installed in order and control.
A rebel with or without a cause, like the gas station lead, who made herself. Juggler of jokes, many of which had her as the main protagonist. His age was a mystery. In his booth he repeated to me the answer he gave to Jesus Quintero when I asked him if he was gay, a sissy or homosexual. “I’m a fagot with an accent on the o.”So that the academics who ignore the accents find out.
Felix Machuca said of her that Esmeralda invented the world of Pedro Almodovar. She was never a run-of-the-mill girl. She was the assistant of Marife de Triana, her swordsman. In a society with a law of Vagos and Rogues in which he found a loophole to turn his tears into laughter. Fellini was annoyed that on a visit to the United States he was introduced to Fellinian characters. The Esmeralda would be one of them. Pure transgression, like the miner in a song by Juanito Valderrama who dug holes in morality without morality to find loopholes and a survival habitat. Everyone underground.
